Gustav Becker – Hauptkatalog 1912 (Reformatted Edition on CD-ROM)
By Victor Tang (Editor)

Gustav Becker – Hauptkatalog 1912 (Reformatted Edition on CD-ROM). By Victor Tang (Editor). Published 2008; trilingual in German, French, English; 665 pages, in protected pdf-format on CD-ROM, printable and searchable, includes copy of the required Adobe Reader software. Available at http:// www.Any400Day.com for a costsharing payment of US$10 (plus US$5 for worldwide shipping).

Collectors of American factory made clocks don’t realize how spoiled they are when it comes to identifying their pieces. In the course of the last 50 years hundreds of very scarce original manufactures’ catalogs have been reproduced in facsimile by Loren Scanlon, by American Reprints, by the Bristol Museum, by Adam Brown and others, and with some diligence and luck copies can of these reprints can often be found for a few dollars. Furthermore Tran Duy Ly has made life even simpler by producing comprehensive, brand wide catalogs, each spanning many years for just about all major brands. These books provide copious reproductions of many of the original catalog images from when the models were first launched, they list model name and numbers, as well as often dimensions and indications which movements came in which clocks.

For European-made factory clocks – and this holds equally true for the British, the French and the German manufacturers – there are virtually no such reference books or readily available facsimiles of historic catalogs. Even the best libraries at the major European horological museums have only precious few original catalogs. Private collectors who stumble on a surviving original catalog that has survived on a continent ravished by two world wars jealously guard their finds without sharing their contents. Therefore the initiative of Victor Tang, to reproduce the massive “Hauptkatalog 1912 der Vereinigte Uhrenfabriken Actiengesellschaft incl. vormals Gustav Becker Freiburg in Schlesien” represents a major and important addition to the readily available reference material on the Gustav Becker brand.

Wisely Mr. Tang, who resides in Singapore, and operates the www.Any400Day.com website where this catalog is now available on a non-commercial (cost-sharing) basis, chose to publish this in CD-ROM format, making shipping costs most affordable. The CD contains a very large pdf file of 665 pages. The vast majority of these pages contain one image of a clock, with its model number, and a trilingual (German, French, English) text providing dimensions (in cm and inches), and a few words of classification and description.

It is obvious that this is NOT actually a facsimile edition of the historic catalog, but a newly created, digital re-edition of all the material from the original document. I am not sure if the original catalog even was multilingual, but the original certainly had a very different format, with more than one image per page. While all the data is there, the format chosen for the reedition sacrifices some of the historic flavor and context.

The advantage of the reformatting approach (which meant recreating all the text in a modern font) is that the resulting electronic document is fully searchable by any string of characters. If you search for “Höhe, Height, Hauteur 100cm” the Adobe Reader will find and list the seven pages that contain this string of characters, i.e all Gustav Becker Clocks offered in 1912 which were 100 centimeters high. While recognizing that there is great value in the chosen approach, peronally this reviewer, a fanatic bibliophile, still misses the old fonts and original page layout. The work could also benefit from the inclusion of a short ‘editors note’ explaining the process of how the file was created.

I do not mean to be critical of the editor, because the resulting document does provide a huge treasure trove of historic horological information. The reader will find detailed information and clear case images of over 500 models of Gustav Becker clocks, as well as similar data on dozens of different movements, pendulum bobs and gongs. Most of this information is simply not available anywhere else. Mr. Tang deserves the gratitude of the global community of horological scholars for his pioneering work in a sector where so far virtually nothing had been published.

Given the scarcity of this kind of information I am looking forward to more publications by Any400Day.com. Reportedly a major Junghans catalog may be next. Hopefully more will follow and possibly other horological enthusiasts will be inspired by Mr. Tang’s example to reproduce data from various European historic clock catalogs in various forms – be they facsimiles or reditions - over the coming years. This would start filling the gaping hole in readily available information on the product lineup of the big European producers of mass produced clocks.


Fortunat Mueller-Maerki
Sussex, New Jersey
July 15, 2008

__________________
Fortunat Mueller-Maerki, Sussex NJ - Board Member NAWCC / Editor & Publisher of BHM
Member Library & Museum Coll.Com. / VP, USA Sect. Antiquar.Horolog.Soc.

Junghans – Katalog 1927 (Edition on CD-ROM)
By Victor Tang (Editor)

Junghans – Katalog 1927 (Edition on CD-ROM). By Victor Tang (Editor). Published 2008; quatrolingual in German, French, English, Italian; 144 pages, in protected pdf-format on CD-ROM, printable and searchable, includes copy of the required Adobe Reader software. Available at http:// www.Any400Day.com for a cost-sharing payment of US$10 (plus US$5 for worldwide shipping).

A while ago I reported in this space that Victor Tang, a clock enthusiast based in Singapore, who had acquired a quantity of vintage German clock catalogs had started the process of making them available for a modest cost-sharing fee as scans on CD ROM. Gustav Beckers’ 1912 Catalog marked the beginning of the process.

Now the second issue of the series is available: The 1927 catalog of Gebruder Junghans, in Schramberg, Germany. Given the rarity of the originals and the fact that no facsimile prints exist this is great news for clock collectors around the world.

Tang utilizes a somewhat different scanning setup for this catalog, in my view an improvement over the previous format. Now the formatting of each page follows the graphic layout of the original document, the pages appear as facsimiles of the original. But thanks to some clever electronic handiwork finding the desired model is very easy. Page 3 of the pdf file contains a table of contents (by product groups, such as e.g. ‘Lever time pieces for writing table’, page 59) but the creator of the file has conveniently turned all these entries into clickable, internal links that take you automatically to the right page. The same feature is found on the Index by Model Numbers on page 4 and 5, and on the Index by Model Name on page 7 and 8.

There are 144 pages to this pdf file and on each page you find between one and nine models, I would estimate that the document describes around 400 to 500 different models, including the numerous entries that describe various movement types rather than clock models.

The whole text is searchable using the pdf search function, which will easily find any string of characters in the document, because the whole document has been OCRed. All pages are printable at 150 dpi (limited to noncommercial use).

More likely than not the original catalog available to Tang did not include the original front and back covers, as images of the front and back of these sheets are missing. It also appears that the editor has adjusted the pagination of the finished document to account for this. As a bibliophile I personally missed an editors note with bibliographic information (such as e.g. exact dimensions) describing the original document. But this re-edition is a most valuable addition to the horological literature.

Victor Tang is doing a great service to the global community of clock collectors and I am sure many of them join me in eagerly awaiting the next editions in the series.

Fortunat Mueller-Maerki, Sussex, New Jersey, August 18, 2008

__________________
Fortunat Mueller-Maerki, Sussex NJ - Board Member NAWCC / Editor & Publisher of BHM
Member Library & Museum Coll.Com. / VP, USA Sect. Antiquar.Horolog.Soc.

Hamburg-Amerikanische Uhrenfabrik – Catalogue and Price List 1929 (Edition on CD-ROM)
by Victor Tang (Editor)

Hamburg-Amerikanische Uhrenfabrik – “Musterbuch D18”(1928) and “Uhrmacher-Preisliste No. 570, August 1929, zu Musterbuch D18 und Nachtrag D22” [‘Hamburg-American Clock Company, Master Catalogue No. D18’ and ‘Price List for Clockmakers (resellers), August 1929, for Master Catalogue D18 and Addendum D22’; (Edition on CD-ROM). By Victor Tang (Editor). Published 2008; in German, French, English, Spanish; Catalogue I-VII, 151 pages, price list I-II, 28 pages; in protected pdf-format on CD-ROM, printable and searchable, includes copy of the required Adobe Reader software. Available at http:// www.Any400Day.com for a cost-sharing payment of US $10 (plus US $5 for worldwide shipping).

This CD is the third in the series that Victor Tang, a clock enthusiast based in Singapore, who had acquired a quantity of vintage German clock catalogues, has started to make available for a modest cost-sharing fee as scans on CD ROM. The HAU/HAC Catalogue follows the Gustav Becker 1912 and the 1927 Junghans catalog, and in my opinion is the best yet in this series. All three are “must have” titles for any collector or scholar of early 20th century factory-made clocks: the originals are extremely rare and cannot even be found in most horological research libraries.

The particularly high value of this disc comes from the fact that Tang was able to find not only the undated 151 page illustrated HAU/HAC Master Catalogue D18 (dated 1928), but the accompanying 28-page price list for clockmakers/resellers, which is dated August 1929. Given that Hamburg-American, based in the Black Forest town of Schramberg, was a very export oriented maker -- its famous crossed arrows trademark was recognized round the world -- these should be of interest to users everywhere. The catalogues are fully quadrilingual with all texts in English, French, and Spanish in addition to the original German.

Tang utilizes a very user friendly setup. Both publications on the CD are protected pdf-files. They can be easily viewed and enlarged (they were scanned at 600 dpi) on your computer, and any page can also be printed (in low 150 dpi resolution) for reference purposes, but you can not copy and paste individual images or textblocks from the pdf-file. The catalogue includes (1) the table of contents by 11 different types of clock, and indexes both by (2) model name and (3) model number. Tang has turned these three parts into electronic indexes to the catalogue, and clicking on the text will take you automatically to the right page of the document. Furthermore the whole text is searchable using the pdf search function, which will easily find any string of characters in the document, because the whole document has been OCRed. A total of 421 model numbers of clocks are described and illustrated.

The price list that was issued in August 1929 to “clockmakers” (resellers) for this catalogue is a separate 28-page pdf file, and also covers the Catalogue Addendum D22 of which no copy is available. In this document there are no internal links, but the pdf search functions will find any word or string of characters.

Thank you Victor for making this series available to horologists at such favorable terms! I am eagerly awaiting the next issues.

Fortunat Mueller-Maerki, Sussex, New Jersey, October 18, 2008

__________________
Fortunat Mueller-Maerki, Sussex NJ - Board Member NAWCC / Editor & Publisher of BHM
Member Library & Museum Coll.Com. / VP, USA Sect. Antiquar.Horolog.Soc.